eli5 What does exactly the minimum temperature that we see in the daily weather forecast mean? Is it calculated using temperatures observed during the whole night? Meaning from 00:00am to 11:59pm or to the sunrise of the following day?
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It’s more of an approximation of the coldest we expect it to get.
It’s not even that precise either, as I have seen miminums get outclassed by the facts several times this year alone, but it’s a good enough approximation. This is taken, usually, via seasons norms, recent averages for that hour, expected atmospheric pressure (which encompasses fronts, both hot and cold), chance of rain and such.
At least around here, it’s the lowest temperature you’ll expect to see this calendar day, midnight to midnight.
Usually that will occur in the early morning hours shortly before sunrise, but sometimes you’ll get warm or cold fronts that push through and make the day’s weather cycle a little wacky.
If there’s some unusual weather pattern that day, the meteorologist will usually qualify the forecast with some additional explanation.
“This low temp will be exactly at midnight because we expect a warm front to come through overnight”
I believe he is asking; If today is Monday and the weather on the evening news says the low/high will be 15/45 today and 17/41 Tue, is “Today’s low from the early morning Monday, or from early morning Tuesday?
I assume the first answer to the correct one where “Todays low” and “Todays High” are within the same 24hr period midnight to midnight.
Adding complication they often say things like “Overnight Lows will be…” and “Tonight’s Low will be…” which would be from sunset to sunrise.
These things seem pretty simple, but I think I often am not paying enough attention to the context/verbiage and the temp in my head is actually for the next or previous day.
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